Tuesday, November 3, 2015

Certainly, it is one of my
favorite parks… and in early September, 2014 my friend and I embarked on my 6th
visit to this park! The weather was still very good and the forecast did not
call for any rain. Upon arriving at the park’s Pete Access Point, we were told
about very active black bears in the park and advised to hang our food, which
we were planning to do anyway. It was a little windy, but most of the time we
paddled in channels and were sheltered from the wind. It took us almost 4 hours
to arrive at our campsite — this time we reserved campsite #601 on Jenner Bay
My friend, a canoeing novice, found such long paddling quite challenging and
was very content when we finally reached the campsite.

Campsite # 601 on Jenner Bay

I had visited this campsite
several years ago; it was located in a magical, a.k.a. eerie forest and it was
rather dark. There was a small clearing on the shore of the lake, with the fire
pit and a bench. Because I had almost always set up campsites on rocky islands,
exposed to the elements, quite often on bare rock, it was certainly a totally
different camping experience. Besides… I just wanted to find out if the eerie
feeling I had had several years ago was going to translate into something more
tangible and sinister… like a haunting house (or, in this case, a haunting
campsite). There were two additional campsites on Jenner Bay (remained vacant
during our stay), yet quite substandard. We quickly set up our tents and found
two branches perfect for hanging food.

View from our campsite

There were a couple of old
pits here and there, most likely man-made. They resembled trenches which dotted
forests in Poland—remnants of the Second World War. Later I asked a part warden
about them; whereas he did not know their origin or purpose, he said that there
used to be a lot of human activity in the park and it was very likely there
were some kind of structures many years ago. They kind of looked like mass
graves, which caved in after whatever was buried in them, had disintegrated…
but I did not try to carry out any semi-archeological research.

This catfish does not look pretty, but it makes a great meal!

The bay was quite private,
although a small boat moored for two nights and from time to time we saw a few
fishing boats come to the bay.

Chris with our dinner

Every day we were canoeing on
Jenner Bay and on Lake Huron; the second day we caught a big, 16 lb catfish,
which we fried and it was delicious! Later we caught two pikes, both in Jenner
Bay, and they ended up in our frying pan as well.

The water level kept visibly
changing; sometimes it reached the fire pit, at other times it receded at least
one meter. Although we religiously hanged our food on trees’ branches, no
animal every disturbed it and we only saw a few cute mice at night near the
fire pit. A few times we spotted colorful hummingbirds.

One day we paddled to Frying
Pan Island, where we went to the small store (also an LCBO agency, where
alcoholic beverages might be purchased), replenished our beer and ice supplies
and then paddled to the famous Henry’s Restaurant. Soon, I realized that
something was amiss: the restaurant’s docks, normally bustling with activity
and full of cruisers, motorboats, sailing boats and float planes, were
completely deserted. I guessed the restaurant had closed for the season right
after the September 2 Labour Day, just a few days earlier! Well, we stopped at
the Sans Souci and Copperhead Association where I could finally read and take
photographs of several monuments/inscriptions (which I had always only seen
from afar). One of them was dedicated to the famous explorer Samuel de
Champlain, who had passed in this area 399 years ago:

Samuel de Champlain

by

Canoe

1615

“As for me, I labour always

To prepare a way for those

Willing after me to follow it.”

The Province of Ontario

The Georgian Bay Association

1948

After a while we paddled back
to our campsite, where we sat, sipped the delicious, cold beer and admired the
rising full moon.

On the second-last evening,
while sitting on the shore and reading a magazine, I suddenly noticed a coiled
snake near the canoe; unmistakably, it was the Eastern Massasauga Rattlesnake,
the only venomous snake in Ontario, after which the park is named. I
immediately called my Chris and grabbed the camera. He hurried in and initially
suspected that I had placed a rubber snake just to scare him, as the snake was
motionless — but soon it began sluggishly slithering forward, powerfully
rattling its tail.

The Eastern Massasauga Rattlesnake at our campsite

Its rattle was made up of 9 rings. It was exactly the 5th
time I had seen a rattlesnake in Ontario, but this one was the biggest: it was
up to 1 meter long, very thick and unlike the previous rattlesnakes, it was not
scared of us at all and did not try to escape as the others had always done.
Instead, it kept forcefully moving forward across the clearing, then cut
through the fire pit and eventually disappeared in the bush. Knowing that
rattlesnakes usually hunt at night, patiently waiting for passing rodents, we
became very careful while walking all over our campsite, especially after dusk.
Although the last fatality due to the Massasauga Rattlesnake bite in Ontario
was in the 1960s, we did not want to take any risks (by the way, the hospital
in Parry Sound did carry have snakebite serum).

Hummingbird

While paddling back to Pete’s
Place, my handheld Garmin GPS became totally misaligned and after trying to fix
it, I gave up and got my back-up unit, which I always bring with me. Of course,
we could have found our way back without the GPS, but it was much easier to do
so with the help of this modern piece of technology. It was fairly windy and we
had to paddle hard on choppy Woods Bay, but once we reached Blackstone Harbour,
the wind subsided.

Around the campfire

The park staff told us that
every day campers were reporting active bears visiting their campsites, but the
bears were not in the area we camped. Fortunately, bears were only interested
in food, not campers, but since I had had quite a few encounters with black
bears, I could only imagine how scary, unnerving and unpleasant such
confrontations must have been!

Nothing spooky or
supernatural took place during our stay there, yet Chris confided to me one
year later that indeed, there was something creepy about this campsite and to
this day he kept thinking about this site.

Overall, it was a nice
canoeing trip: the park was almost deserted, the boat traffic significantly
dwindled, most of the bugs gone and the weather still good. We had hoped to
catch more fish, but well, you cannot have everything! I am looking forward to
visiting this park next year.